Mr. Speaker, certainly it is a pleasure to speak to this private member's bill. I congratulate the member for bringing it to the House. We get very frustrated, as she pointed out, in the health committee where we really cannot deal with any of the issues with which Canadians want to deal. We are forced instead to toe the line and simply go along with one little aspect of the health issue.
This is an issue for Canadians. It is one that they care about. It is one on which they want information. The government would be wise to learn that if information is provided an awful lot of the hearsay and scary stuff will be eliminated.
The age that we came from was much simpler when it came to biology. I cannot help but think back to my days in biology classes at the University of Saskatchewan when our professors would talk about what the future might be when it came to genetics, eugenics and all those sorts of issues. I cannot help but remember back to their talking about issues like Dolly and that sort of science ultimately being applied much further.
The problem with the failure of the government to provide information is that it is left open to emotion. It is left open to using non-scientific information that can frighten people including farmers, consumers and those who care about their health and the health of their families. It can scare them in terms of the new technology which they do not understand. By having that information in place and talking about it in detail we prevent the scary stuff from entering into the discussion.
I have seen what can happen when we deal with non-science, when we deal with what people think might happen. I encourage the government and the House to force the issue of GMOs in the whole area of biotechnology. We should force it to be transparent. We should involve the participation of as many groups including citizen groups as we can. We should go an extra distance with the consultation process and base all our decisions on scientific evidence, not hearsay evidence and the fear some might have.
The safety assessment of biotechnology is critical. We must look at it in our foods. We must ask what it does. We must know that using this technology is for the benefit of humanity, as opposed to a danger to humanity. We should not jump into what we will do. Information is key. The information available to our citizens is what we should be concerned about in the House.
We in the Canadian Alliance have developed a position which we have discussed at some length with our agriculture critic, our health critic, and our membership in general. We came up with a position I certainly want to read into the record. It is much more reasonable than what we have heard from the government side.
The alliance supports using scientific information to determine if an agricultural or food biotechnology product meets Canadian health and safety requirements. If it does, the acceptability of the product in the marketplace should be determined by consumer choice and not by political interference. The alliance supports increased consumer awareness and choice in the voluntary labelling of these products. The alliance also supports labelling of foods that are not genetically modified. This should be on a voluntary consumer driven basis, which would go a long way toward solving some of the problems of today.
While we come out somewhat in between where the hon. member stands in terms of genetically modified foods and where the government is at, the ends we would go to would be much the same and would accomplish the same for Canadians. That is what should be important when it comes to an issue like this one.
There are reasons to label everything. We can look at them, but we must ask some questions. Why would we do that? The obvious answer is for people with allergies and different genetic make-ups. There could be a peanut in something that they would not expect it to be in. That is an obvious reason. That is science and a reason for labelling. People are developing increased resistances and increased allergies. All kinds of medical issues should be dealt with, which we need a lot more information on.
We could simply respond to our trading partners. I particularly point to the European Union. In many respects, from the little bit I know about what the European Union has done, it seems that it has been stampeded into opposing genetically modified foods without the science that is there. We could point fingers at why that happened but we can understand the politics involved. Some of it would be justified and some would not. We should have learned from that however that we had better not get in that same category of being stampeded into labelling or not labelling just based on scientific fearmongering.
The obvious disadvantages we have think about when we talk about labelling, and the one that would be most significant to me, would be the cost to our agricultural community which is already under severe strain.
Over the past week I was in my riding talking to farmers at farmers' markets and at town hall meetings. One morning I met with a group of farmers and they told me that they were growing canola that was roundup resistant and that they were worried about what would happen if we started to overregulate. They said that it would hurt an industry that is already hurting. We must consider that and look at the consumers and the food manufacturers. We must tell the farmers that we will not get on the bandwagon of anti-GMO just because someone else is pushing us. We must make sure that we consider the farmers and all the others who are affected.
How would we enforce the labelling of genetically modified foods? I read an article once that said “If a chicken eats genetically modified grain does that mean you are going to label the chicken as being genetically modified?” My biology says that we have been eating chromosomes and genes for an awfully long time and that I will not become what I eat in terms of genetics. I am not likely to have canola growing out of my ears or a cob of corn under my neck or whatever. That is not science. It will not what happen.
I cannot help but think of some of the bills we have passed in this House. I cannot for the life of me imagine how we will enforce Bill C-23, which might be the most recent example. We will have sex police checking out couples. We will spend $4.5 million on health police to make sure Alberta follows the law. If someone in Alberta is extra billed or jumps the queue it will be on the front page of every newspaper in that province. We do not need police to do that. We also have the gun police for Bill C-68. I guess we will now have GMO police checking out what chickens are eating. I am not sure where all this stops.
The main point, as my time is running short, is that we should base things on science. We should have voluntary labelling based on consumer demand and we should let the consumers decide. We should base everything we do on science. We should also ensure that consumers are informed. The government must take a lead role in making sure that this information gets out to all Canadians who are concerned about this issue.